The present invention relates to a display for a vehicle, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for displaying both weather and terrain information on a single display.
Modern map displays, particularly those used in aircraft for flight planning and monitoring, are capable of displaying a considerable amount of information such as weather information and terrain information. The terrain information consists of situational awareness (SA) terrain and terrain cautions and warnings which, among other things, may indicate where the aircraft may potentially impact terrain. The weather information consists of airborne weather information from onboard weather radar or weather information received from, for example, ground based or satellite weather sources. In present display systems, the pilot or crewmember (user) selects which information (terrain or weather) he wishes to view.
Previous attempts at integrating weather and terrain information into a single display window in a lateral format suffered from ambiguity as both terrain and weather radar information exhibit similar two-dimensional display features. Three dimensional volumetric weather data representation presents significant ambiguity in storm cell location, size, and internal threat levels. The planned avoidance path using three-dimensional view data is less efficient than using the lateral display information.
Furthermore, displaying weather data in three-dimensional form requires a great deal of processing of the data, making real-time displays difficult to produce in an aircraft cockpit environment.
The present invention addresses the problem of mutual exclusivity of weather and terrain data types. The weather, from a pilot""s point of view is really a two-dimensional problem. That is, commercial pilots go around weather and do not attempt to fly over or under significant weather, therefore it is reasonable to display weather on a lateral map, that is from a perspective of weather areas rather than three-dimensional representations of the weather. Terrain, on the other hand is a three-dimensional problem since height must be considered by the pilot in order to stay above the terrain. Out-the-window view terrain displays allow faster terrain threat identification and allow optimal avoidance maneuvers in comparison to two-dimensional lateral or vertical profile displays.
These and other problems are addressed by providing a display system having a display screen for graphical display of data, a graphics processor for receiving data from at least a terrain data base and data from a weather radar and for converting the received data into a single data stream to provide an input data stream to the display screen. The single display displays the weather data on one portion of the display screen and displays the terrain data on a second portion of the display screen. The weather data is displayed as a two-dimensional graphic and the terrain data is displayed as a three-dimensional graphic, thus providing a user with the necessary flight information while keeping processing resources to a reasonable level. The terrain data is displayed as an out the window display graphic, and the weather data and the terrain data displays are scaled such that the displays are dimensionally juxtaposed to allow rapid recognition of the data by a user of the display system.